The Shelter
by Omnicat
Summary: Middie Une doesn't like people much anymore. / Middie introspection, post-Episode Zero but pre-series


**Title:** The Shelter

**Author:** Omnicat

**Rating:** T

**Genre: **General, Angst

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** _Episode Zero_

**Warnings:** War talk. Angsty, vaguely PTSD-ish angsting and an aimlessness that can only exist in undiluted character study (or speculation, as the case may be).

**Pairings:** None.

**Disclaimer: ***checks tickybox*

**Summary:** Middie Une doesn't like people much anymore. / Middie introspection, post-_Episode Zero_ but pre-series

**Author's Note:** I have no idea where the limp came from. This borrows heavily from Trowa's line about animals being true to their emotions, but if it works for one spy, it works for another. :P Covert crossover! Cookies for anyone who recognizes the crossee. You have good taste.

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**The Shelter**

With a hamster snuggled in a nest of her unbound hair beneath her ear, and another in the sleeve of her baggy sweater, Middie Une stared at the ceiling and wondered if things would be better if the war was over.

Her leg was stiff and wont to ache from inaction, but there was always something to keep her moving here, and only few people to aggravate those _other_ old wounds. The shelter had the quiet of a place full of life but devoid of humans; dogs barked and whined, birds of all kinds chirped their tunes, rodents made tiny clattering noises as they clambered and scrambled around their cages, the stables were full of mooing and bleating and whinnying and the rustle of hay, but human voices were few and far between.

Any footstep other than her employer's tell-tale gait would slow down her movements - hauling bags of food, cleaning cages, administering medicine - until she locked down physically while her mind sped up and informed her of exactly what to do - how to smile, what to say, which stance to take and movements to make. Seconds would stretch to minutes filled with explosions, screams, gunshots, accusing eyes, _dead_ eyes, as the visitor approached. When finally addressed, her only response would be a stiffly pointed finger toward the office - unfailingly, like a compass to the North - and "Talk to the boss.". She was polite nor approachable, even though the boss knew she could be when she wanted to, because she had been a paragon of charm when she applied for the job, and her siblings regularly came over to watch the animals and defrost her distant demeanour, but he didn't mind. She was too young and her movement impaired, but all he cared about was that his animals were treated well, and with a bit of effort she could pull off anything, whether she enjoyed it or not. The man employed her because she was cheap in scarce times and got the hang of what was expected of her within a week of her predecessor's departure to the front lines.

Middie hadn't exactly sought out this job because she was so _proud_ of her people skills, anyway. They got people killed. They brought back ghosts. The boy with the green eyes had spared her, the boy with the straw between his teeth had ruined her leg and fled, but their dead comrades haunted her dreams and lingered behind her senses. The more affected her act and deceitful her betrayal, the more vehement their gestures - _we will finish what they started_ - and poignant their grief and outrage.

As soon as she could, she had fled, limping for all she was worth, taken her too innocently pretty features and too convincing lies and hid them away from the poor fools who kept falling for them. Once her father was better and found a new job, she didn't need to seek out danger money anymore, and could lock herself away in the animal shelter, where her now modest salary sufficed in supplementing her father's and keep the family fed and clothed. She didn't have to look men and women in the eye anymore while she told sweet lies and plotted their demise. When she set off to work, the echoes of passers-by - _we are on to you, we will not let you, we will show you what it is like_ - were no longer as loud.

As long as she didn't look anyone in the face they were only memories - _how could you, how could you, how could you_ - and she could tell them things were different now - _I will make up for it_. She would continue the efforts of the Captain with the scar over his eye, who took in strays just because he could, and of Jet, who grinned courage into his freedom fighters while biting a straw to keep his own teeth from chattering.

And she would do it somewhere she could not gain false trust only to betray the lives she held in her hands. Laboratories wanted strong, healthy specimen, Middie told herself, not scarred strays struggling to survive and orphans with indeterminable origin, and repeated over and over what a good thing it was that what she did made enough money to keep Minuit from offering himself to a few of the places she had tried in the past. The faces of her family, _safe safe safe,_ were almost enough to force those of her victims from her mind.

The animals were unaffected by what she said or how she looked; they could smell truth from lies, forcing her to put a sincerity into her actions she had become afraid of showing to anyone, afraid of _feeling_, knowing how easily the truth shattered and brought down the little worlds people made for themselves. Lies lasted so much longer; there was only one truth, one you had no control over, one you could never get back once it broke, but lies were always at your beck and call when you needed them, never running out.

But only true tenderness could make an animal trust you to be good to it, make a dog run wild bare its teeth for inspection without biting, make a homesick songbird sing to you, or a cat smooth its fur and relax into a sprawl to enjoy your grooming. The animals in the shelter did not trust easily - they had almost invariably been abandoned by their owners, who either died or became unable to take care of them anymore, or been abused, their owners having relieved the stress of war on them or used them as living shields, having them fight intruders and sniff out danger until their loyal efforts paid off and rendered them useless.

They were a lot like the mercenaries and freedom fighters she had led to their deaths, and learning to take care of them - to truly _care_ for them, not merely go through the motions in just the right way to satisfy the boss - was a lot like learning to use her leg again after Jet had mauled it in his vengeful rage. To Middie's eleven-year-old self, the war had been a confusing, tangled mess that only made sense when she thought of it as Us against Them - something made impossible for her by the need to be one of Them whenever she went out on a mission for Us. What the grownups did never made sense to her; Middie just wanted to feed her family, but they spoke of things like honour and glory, power and justice, things she couldn't say she had ever seen, couldn't imagine the use of. Now, at fourteen, things were little clearer. All she knew was that people lied and hurt each other and lied about why they hurt each other, and she could never say when they would turn on each other or what their reasons _meant_. And she had been no better. She'd only wanted to feed her family, but somehow she had ended up lying and hurting people more than men and women twice her age.

If that was what war made people be like, Middie would rather forget what human words meant and not have anything to do with them anymore. She'd just take care of her family by taking care of the animals: feeding them, keeping them clean and healthy, treating them kindly.

"Animals only ever attack because they're scared." the boss always said, rubbing his thumb over the large scar on the side of his face and staring at the cages in a way Middie imagined she must do too, sometimes. "And they only ever kill what they need to eat."

And she could see that he was right. The shelter became her sanctuary, her place to escape that which turned her into a monster and committed crimes no sane person could understand - was it the world or the people in it? It broke her heart sometimes to see the naked fear and helplessness in the animals' eyes, and when she finally allowed herself to cry over it all, from the pain and the madness, the tears she shed made her feel just a tiny bit less dirty, less like a liar.

With a hamster snuggled in a nest of her unbound hair beneath her ear, and another in the sleeve of her baggy sweater, Middie Une stared at the ceiling and wondered if things would be better if the war was over.

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**PSAN:** If you hadn't already guessed, Minuit is one of Middie's three little brothers - the oldest, to be precise. Hope you liked the fic! Middie needs more love.


End file.
